It's been a week since my family and I went into Isolation, just writing that makes it all sound weird but it's normality, COVID-19. All my work dried up ten days ago because of the pandemic so since then I've been concentrating on the films and all the footage I have. But today with a lockdown all over the country looking more and more likely I decided it might be my last chance to get out. So with the car quickly packed with a couple of rods, some marmite sandwiches and tea cakes I set forth for a few hours in splendid isolation by the lake.
I arrived around one o'clock and drove around the lake to the back of the wind. On this side of the lake the margin slopes off nicely to 28 feet so, depending on the wind direction and the weather you can place your bait at any depth. It had been sunny for the last few days so the left hand rod went just past the reeds to my left in 4 foot of water while the right went further out in front of me in 6-7 feet.
A handful of crazy nut chops was popped on top of both of them and I put the kettle on, ten minutes later the left hand rod in four feet of water tore off with a small common on the other end. They're always skirting them reeds when the sun comes out, so I wasn't surprised.
After checking and re-sharpening the hook I popped it back out and re-baited, this time placing it a little further out. I had another small common and a bream from the rods before I decided to react to the rolling fish that I had been seeing further out in the deeper water.
It was 3:30 pm a couple of hours before sundown, time enough I thought to try and make something happen. I baited up the deeper water with a couple of handfuls of crazy nut and recast both rods onto it. Half an hour later I had a nice double figure common that really pulled in over 20 feet of water, a little while later I followed it up with one of the rarer double figure mirrors, happy days!
I sat there for another thirty minutes and watched the sun go down, thinking how enjoyable this short session had been and how hard it was going to be in the coming weeks and months, it might be some time before I'm back.